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Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Originally Posted by Vlad

Dry, I have tried to explain to you my reasoning. Is it a matter of fact that Jesus was anti-homosexuality or slavery? No, it is not. But there is almost nothing factual that we know of Jesus, to say anything with any certainty, so most of it are an opinions, do you agree? When you say that Jesus was all for peace as a factual statement, I can say that is a lie. Why? Because I can provide a bunch of Jesus' supposed lines that would be contrary to the belief that he was all for peace. For example, Mathew 6:11. I won't even try to summarize what it said, because it is cruel and terrible. He sounds worse than North Korean dictator in that line. Do you see my point? Notion of peace DOES NOT equal Mathew 6:11. Not in my view.

My statement about him being a homophobe was an exaggeration. I made a mistake of judgement thinking that he knows Mosaic Law, but he was most likely illiterate, so the notion that he read Torah is probably ridiculous, I am sure he heard few things here and there, but that's it. So, yes he most likely simply not aware of it. I agree that he did not at any point condemn homosexuality.

As far as slavery, it probably is still an exaggeration on my part, however, you can find lines where Jesus approves of beating a servant with a stripe, Luke 12:46-47, but I agree it is picking and choosing on my part.

I'm reading everything you and the others write very carefully and am pondering it all. It gives me a new appreciation for the temptation on the part of many Christians to bury their heads in the sand and run off to church for comfort.

Just yesterday I observed an online discussion about Obeah/voodoo. The most vehement supporter of it talked about it as if it were a spiritual certainty. Eventually, she admitted that her strong convictions on its veracity were based on an account allegedly experienced by a friend of a friend. Seriously, a friend of hers had told her about what a friend of hers allegedly witnessed. And that made it fact.

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Here's a couple of my cents.
Because there is no consensus on the true meaning/essence of the Bible, Torah, Koran, I feel as though it is a deeply personal interpretation. So why must belief be organized into religion? It ultimately is a singular belief. On some level I can understand wanting to be with like minded individuals, as we are here on TAT regarding tennis. But even if we weren't here on TAT we would all still like/love tennis just the same. We also don't try to kill each other over our likes and dislikes of certain players as religious organizations have done for centuries against those who believe differently than their leadership dictates. Also, because belief is so singularly personal, I find the associations between many congregants disingenuous ultimately leading me to think to that if I were a "believer" I doubt I would belong to any organized church/mosque/temple because there is no possible way that millions of people are thinking/believing the same way as I do. Does that make any sense?

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Originally Posted by owendonovan

Here's a couple of my cents.
Because there is no consensus on the true meaning/essence of the Bible, Torah, Koran, I feel as though it is a deeply personal interpretation. So why must belief be organized into religion? It ultimately is a singular belief. On some level I can understand wanting to be with like minded individuals, as we are here on TAT regarding tennis. But even if we weren't here on TAT we would all still like/love tennis just the same. We also don't try to kill each other over our likes and dislikes of certain players as religious organizations have done for centuries against those who believe differently than their leadership dictates. Also, because belief is so singularly personal, I find the associations between many congregants disingenuous ultimately leading me to think to that if I were a "believer" I doubt I would belong to any organized church/mosque/temple because there is no possible way that millions of people are thinking/believing the same way as I do. Does that make any sense?

Yes it does. Thomas Paine wrote the following in his Age of Reason.

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

In that writing, he pretty much talked about what you just described.

"Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd." Baruch Spinoza

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Originally Posted by owendonovan

Here's a couple of my cents.
Because there is no consensus on the true meaning/essence of the Bible, Torah, Koran, I feel as though it is a deeply personal interpretation. So why must belief be organized into religion? It ultimately is a singular belief. On some level I can understand wanting to be with like minded individuals, as we are here on TAT regarding tennis. But even if we weren't here on TAT we would all still like/love tennis just the same. We also don't try to kill each other over our likes and dislikes of certain players as religious organizations have done for centuries against those who believe differently than their leadership dictates. Also, because belief is so singularly personal, I find the associations between many congregants disingenuous ultimately leading me to think to that if I were a "believer" I doubt I would belong to any organized church/mosque/temple because there is no possible way that millions of people are thinking/believing the same way as I do. Does that make any sense?

I understand you completely, owen. I swore off religion for years, tried my best not to think about it at all other than personal meditation, those quiet times when I would just think to myself, ponder things, try to find some answers. I had reconciled myself to the fact that I would never fit.

TAT discussions started getting me thinking about it again. Various discussions inside and outside this thread showed me that there are other people who think and believe very much along the same lines I do--that faith can be liberating rather than restrictive and dogmatic.

But it wasn't until I stumbled across The Christian Left on FB that my re-interest got really piqued. As of right now, there is an online community of nearly 77,000 people who share a very similar view of faith.

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Originally Posted by ponchi101

I think that for normal people, things do balance a bit.
The loving, caring husband, a hard working person that is a pillar of society, and kills somebody accidentally gets a bit more leniency, and will not do 20 years. But sadly, he should do some time.
.

I don't want to sound nasty, but it seems simplistic. There are a lot of circumstances to "accidentally killing" someone, and I believe most people get off the hook.

Also, let me give it another twist (so far we've done the good absolves bad line), but what if the man killed was a bad person (running the whole gamut of badness for different examples): does he not only "deserve" it more but is this not also a mitigating factor in the killer's sentence and the bad karma it ensues? Example: if you managed to kill Hitler, Bin Laden etc etc, is it really bad karma?

Originally Posted by dryrunguy

IThis assertion is no less a fallacy than saying that God must be against contraception because he smote Onan for spilling his seed. (This fallacy relies on the assertion that no other male Biblical character ever masturbated because none of them got smote. Seriously? At an even more fundamental level, it assumes that Onan actually existed. I wonder if Jesus ever masturbated. If he was fully human, then chances are the answer is yes. See? I just wrote that. And I didn't get smote.

I'm just thinking here, in the case such a person existed (which I believe did not, and if he did he was nothing more than a simple human enshrined afterwards): he certainly spilled seed when growing up: nocturnal pollutions. So how do religious people juggle with that?

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Originally Posted by Drop-shot

I'm just thinking here, in the case such a person existed (which I believe did not, and if he did he was nothing more than a simple human enshrined afterwards): he certainly spilled seed when growing up: nocturnal pollutions. So how do religious people juggle with that?

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you have put it in the offering plate when the church asks for collections.

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

This is just so sad.
*****

Hours after he asked his parishioners to pray for him, Rev. Rafael Reatiga was found shot to death in a car in Bogota with another Roman Catholic priest.
The Associated Press reported that police initially suspected that Reatiga and Rev. Richard Piffano, 37, were victims of robbery. But now, three weeks after their bodies were found, Colombian prosecutors say the two Catholic priests hired hitmen to kill them when at least one of them was diagnosed with AIDS.
Prosecutors located the alleged hitmen based on phone numbers the priests had called from their cell phones days before their deaths.
Prosecutors said Tuesday that the priests paid about $8,500 for the hit. They had originally planned to commit suicide by throwing themselves into a canyon but couldn’t bring themselves to jump. Medical tests showed that Reatiga, 36, had AIDS.
He also had syphilis and had been seen visiting places frequented by gay men in Bogota, according to the AP.
Two of the four assassins have been arrested, the AP reported. They face up to 40 years in prison if convicted.

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Originally Posted by dryrunguy

Just yesterday I observed an online discussion about Obeah/voodoo. The most vehement supporter of it talked about it as if it were a spiritual certainty. Eventually, she admitted that her strong convictions on its veracity were based on an account allegedly experienced by a friend of a friend. Seriously, a friend of hers had told her about what a friend of hers allegedly witnessed. And that made it fact.

Sounds similar to how New Testament got started..
Except, that account would be copied (by hand of course) and spread. And then that accounts would be copied, changed a bit and spread. And then all those in circulation copied, altered, and spread... and so on many more times and there still none of those copies available. Only after 150 years after Mark was written, that the first partial version of it available. First full and complete copy of Mark dates to year 350 or so. A lot more copies are made later. When scholars and historians compare all those, as Professor Bart D. Ehrman states: "There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands mistakes and discrepancies between all those copies"

It was taken from Bart Ehrman debate with Craig Evans that I was watching recently. Interesting to see the whole thing, but here is part he talks about copies. Start at 6:30

Last edited by Vlad; 02-15-2012 at 08:36 PM.

"Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd." Baruch Spinoza

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

This is an older article, but I just only ran across it in the context of a chat about Santorum wanting to return to the past using non-traditional (but sort of loosely based) religious views. Kind of caught my attention as there was an interesting universe discussion in the pseudoscience thread, so I felt compelled to share.

Phillips attends Our Lady Immaculate Catholic Church in Oak Park, a parish run by the Society of St. Pius X, a group that rejects most of the modernizing reforms the Vatican II council made from 1962 to 1965.

But by challenging modern science, the proponents of a geocentric universe are challenging the very church they seek to serve and protect.

"I have no idea who these people are. Are they sincere, or is this a clever bit of theater?" said Brother Guy Consolmagno, the curator of meteorites and spokesman for the Vatican Observatory.

Indeed, those promoting geocentrism argue that heliocentrism, or the centuries-old consensus among scientists that the Earth revolves around the sun, is nothing more than a conspiracy theory to squelch the church's influence.

...

But supporters of the theory contend that there is scientific evidence to support geocentrism, just as there is evidence to support the six-day story of creation in Genesis.

There is proof in Scripture that the Earth is the center of the universe, Sungenis said. Among many verses, he cites Joshua 10:12-14 as definitive proof: "And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, while the nation took vengeance on its foe. … The sun halted in the middle of the sky; not for a whole day did it resume its swift course."

But Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., said the Bible is silent on geocentrism.

"There's a big difference between looking at the origin of the planets, the solar system and the universe and looking at presently how they move and how they are interrelated," Ham said. "The Bible is neither geocentric or heliocentric. It does not give any specific information about the structure of the solar system."

...

I thought I had heard of such fringe groups in the past, but most of the bizarre ones turn out to be satire. Apparently this one wasn't a joke.

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Originally Posted by James7

This is an older article, but I just only ran across it in the context of a chat about Santorum wanting to return to the past using non-traditional (but sort of loosely based) religious views. Kind of caught my attention as there was an interesting universe discussion in the pseudoscience thread, so I felt compelled to share.

Re: Let's Discuss Religion.

Dear Tim:
There actually IS a very simple explanation. If there is no...
Well, it is simple, but it takes a while to understand it. We will be here to help you ease into your new believe structure.
Sincerely,
Ponchi (and Vlad and Woody)